Pictures and thoughts from a Memphis Musician's Wife

Posts tagged ‘live music. keyboard’

What makes a musician famous? Is it their album sales? Is it the clothes they wear? It seems these days, that with all the new studio technology, you don’t even really have to know how to play an instrument or really even sing to make a hit. With pop culture, you don’t even really have to be saying anything in a song to have a hit and sell millions of records. On a daily basis, I see musicians who play LIVE music every day struggle to get by. I see a band of young “hip” stars touring with full police escorts who lip sync and have full bands of musicians pretending to play instruments to a click track. Someone said something to Jeremy the other day that really made a lot of sense. They told him he is a pianist, not a keyboardist. Keyboardists use their keyboards as machines, to make beats or use all kinds of crazy sounds. Pianists use their machine as nothing more than an instrument when they are in a live situation. Don’t get me wrong, the keyboardists are definitely skilled artists, but I truly believe that the people getting all the big money should be the ones who are actually doing all the work without all the technical help. Musicians years ago didn’t have the ability to transpose their pianos. They had to actually learn all of their scales and chords. It’s really sad to see how little respect the musicians who have actually learned how to play their instrument get and how much respect the people who have no clue as to what they are doing get. We need to bring back the days of real live music. Where there is feeling and passion in what the musicians are actually doing.